Opinion: Issues

The sad irony of the recent protests at Rome’s La Sapienza University that kept Pope Benedict XVI from speaking there was that they were based entirely on a mistake. Not only was the source of the protests—a 1990 quote about Galileo lifted from a speech given by then Cardinal Ratzinger—taken out-of-context, the statement… READ MORE >

News: Faith

"The head of the CDF has to draw lines, level punishments and basically talk tough, a role that Ratzinger seemed to relish, but one that won him epithets like God's Rottweiller and the old standby, the Panzerkardinal. But now that Cardinal Ratzinger is Pope Benedict, he knows better than anyone that he is also the chief pastor of the church. There can be no 'Panzerpope.' His job is to be the good cop, a symbol of unity who tries to encourage people to live their faith more deeply. As he told a dinner companion about his new role: 'It was easy to know the doctrine. It’s much harder to help a billion people live it.'"
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Opinion: Faith

Time Magazine’s recent cover story about Benedict XVI’s upcoming visit had two headlines: “Why The Pope Loves America,” and “The American Pope.’ Neither title was accurate. It’s hard to imagine the soft-spoken, intellectual, Mozart-loving pontiff as somehow quintessentially American. But is it true that he loves America? Sure,… READ MORE >

Opinion: Faith

The Pope is coming to America. I’ll be with the crowds in D.C. and New York this week, live-blogging my experience of the pope’s visit, and the experiences of the pilgrims and bystanders around me. Secular media coverage has positioned America front-and-center of the trip. I’d like to do the reverse. In my mind, the pope… READ MORE >

Opinion: Faith

I’m comfortably settled in DC at the church of Saint Stephen Martyr on Pennsylvania Ave, and my particular thanks go to Br. Hugh Vincent Dyer (a fellow Godspy contributor) for his generous hospitality. As I entered the parish office I received a warm welcome from Msgr. Filardi, the pastor, but could sense that my arrival was a shade anticlimactic.… READ MORE >

Opinion

As I listened to Pope Benedict XVI’s speech at the White House this morning, I thought of a very wise statement about God: “He loves us just the way we are, but he loves us too much to let us stay that way.” All popes follow this method, the one established by Jesus: Communicate unconditional love specifically to every person and nation,… READ MORE >

Opinion: Faith

11:50. am In roughly fifteen minutes the popemobile will pass by. I walked down Pennsylvania Ave. towards the White House this morning and the mood is electric. Thousands of people line the sidewalk behind the barricades, holding aloft the Vatican flag and chanting “Viva il Papa!” Praise music is the soundtrack (and lots of ‘Happy Birthdays’):… READ MORE >

Opinion: Faith

9:30 pm. I’m beat and a more than a bit sunburned after a day spent in hot pursuit of the popemobile through Washington D.C. This afternoon I was on the campus of Catholic University, where Pope Benedict arrived at around 5:30 to attend Vespers and address the US Catholic bishops in the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.… READ MORE >

Opinion: Faith

1:30 p.m. I’m just back to St. Stephen Martyr from the Pope’s mass at Nationals Park. Without a ticket to get inside the stadium, I watched the mass on a giant TV screen set-up just outside the security gates. (My homemade sign reading “Prayers for a Ticket” didn’t land me any supernatural luck – just what I get for trying to use… READ MORE >

Opinion: Faith

When I first heard that Cardinal Ratzinger had been elected to the papacy, my reaction was, “Good. We’re going to stick it to the liberals!” There had been so much discussion following John Paul II’s death about whether the Church would now accommodate herself to the secular city via women’s ordination, etc., that I could… READ MORE >

Opinion: Faith

I am not a morning person, but this morning I extracted myself from the warmth of slumber at 4:30. I dragged myself to the shower and groggily went out into the chill. My destination was Annunciation Parish in Northwest Washington. There a happy party of about 100 waited to board buses to go to the residence of the Vatican nuncio. We were… READ MORE >

Opinion: Culture

As I listened to the Pope’s U.N. address, while driving through Manhattan with Godspy editors John Romanowsky and John Murphy, and my son Gianni, on our way to videotape among the crowds at Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza, just outside U.N. headquarters, I thought to myself—what could I possibly write about the Pope’s astonishingly deep… READ MORE >